He was shaken awake just as he had been the previous night, but this time by Barrick. “Get up!” the prince whispered. “They’re on the ridge behind us!”

“Who?” But Vansen already knew. He grabbed his sword and rose to his feet. He patted his horse to keep it quiet while he stared up the wooded slope. He could see torches at the top, the flames strangely red against the half-light, and shadows moving down the hill toward them between the trees. “Where is our fairy?” Vansen hissed, half-certain they’d been betrayed, that all the pretense of companionship had been leading to this.

“Here, behind me,” Barrick said. “He says ride straight downhill, then turn downstream when you reach the bottom of the valley. When we come out of the trees we’ll be on a slope heading toward the Whisperfall. If you can get to the river, he says ride out into the middle of it—we should be safe there.”

Something in the heights above them loosed a honking bellow that sounded more like some giant, raw-throated goose than a dog, let alone a person. Vansen’s skin, already prickling with fear, seemed to tighten and bunch all over his body.

“Go!” Barrick hurried toward his own horse. Gyir was already mounted; he helped the prince up. “They’re coming—they know we’re awake now!”

“Are those hounds they have? Wolves?”

Something thrashed down out of the tree and dropped onto him just as he climbed into the saddle. “Don’t forget us, Master!” Skurn croaked, dodging Vansen’s panicky swat. “Take us with!”

“Get behind me, then.” He had to get low in the saddle and didn’t want to be trying to see his way past the raven’s south end.

The honking sounded again as Vansen spurred his mount downslope after the prince’s horse, which he could already barely see through the trees and the shadowland’s eternal evening. Branches slapped at him as though they were angry.

“Them be not hounds, Master,” Skurn screeched, huddled close against Vansen’s back, talons sunk through the fabric at his belt. “Them be those Sniffers. Need no hounds, them sniff so well.” Another honking call split the night, closer now. “Loud, too,” the little creature added needlessly.

The squawking and gabbling noises seemed to come from at least a half a dozen different places up the slope; when Vansen turned he could see the curious red torches in at least that many different spots, all moving steadily downward.

All we can do is pray that the horses do not stumble in the dark and break a leg, he thought. “Do they run well, these Longskulls?” he called back to Skurn. “Will they be able to catch us on flat ground?”

“Oh, Master, us thinks not, but them can track we forever. Smell a nest in the top of a tall tree, they can.”

“Left!” Barrick shouted from somewhere below.

Vansen had just opened his mouth to ask him what he meant when the huge shadow heaved up directly in front of him—a rock the size of a cabin, a protruding bone of the hill’s heavy stone skeleton. He yanked the reins and veered, alm. ost falling headlong as the angle of the slope pitched more steeply downward.